Thursday, March 30, 2017

Renowned wartime journalist Wilfred Burchett described the damage from the atomic bomb that flattened Hiroshima as "far greater than photographs can show." When it comes to the enduring legacy of the Manhattan Project on home soil, the damage to the environment and human health is proving similarly hard to grasp.

The covert project to create the world's first atomic weapon during WWII, coupled with the nuclear proliferation of the Cold War era, has left a trail of toxic and radioactive waste at sites across the nation that will necessitate, by some margin, the largest environmental cleanup in the nation's history. The amount of money that has been poured into remediating the waste already is staggering. Still, it appears that the scale of the problems, and the efforts needed to effectively tackle them, continue to be underestimated by the authorities responsible for their cleanup...

...Hanford, Washington, is a Manhattan Project era facility perched on the lip of the Columbia River, and the scene of the largest single radioactive remediation in the US. Last year, the DOE championed "20 successful years" of environmental cleanup at Hanford, which was decommissioned in the 1980s. Fifty-six million gallons of toxic waste were subsequently stored away in 177 large tanks, some of which have leaked high-level radioactive sludge into the environment. Efforts to build a pretreatment plant for this waste -- with the idea of sending that treated waste to adjacent facilities for final processing -- have, for years, been beset with costly overruns, as well as administrative and corporate failings...

Joe Kennedy of the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe in Death Valley stated, “Our effort is focused on cancer prevention by understanding exposure pathways then conducting risk mitigation in Native American communities.”

Since 1951 the US and UK have conducted nuclear testing within Western Shoshone homelands causing a wide variety of adverse health consequences know to be plausible from exposure to radiation in fallout. The proposed Yucca Mountain high level nuclear waste repository, if licensed, will add significant risk factors to the lives of the Shoshone and Paiute people. According to Ian Zabarte, Secretary of the Native Community Action Council, “Yucca Mountain is within the Shoshone treaty boundary and therefore cannot meet the licensing requirement of ownership since the treaty is in full force and effect. This is our primary contention at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety Licensing Board.” .

The NAFNI 2017 will have presenters speaking about protecting the Grand Canyon including Professor Michael Lerma of Northern Arizona University, author of Indigenous Sovereignty in the 21st Century; Tribal Council Member, Carletta Tillousi, Havasupai Tribe; Klee Benally, Dine’ (Navajo); Leona Morgan, Dine’ No Nukes; Joe Kennedy of the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe; and the Native Community Action Council board members representing Shoshone and Paiute people.

The program will focus on the major nuclear disasters that have had global impact: Three Mile Island (March 1979), Chernobyl (April 1986) and Fukushima (March 2011).

The briefing will include the following presenters, and will be followed by questions and answers with the audience:

Arnie Gunderson, Fairewinds Energy Education

Moderator: Mary Olson, Director, NIRS Southeast Office

Arnie Gundersen has more than 45-years of nuclear power experience. He holds a nuclear safety patent, was a licensed reactor operator who taught reactor physics, and was a senior vice president for the nuclear power industry. As Chief Engineer for Fairewinds Associates, Mr. Gundersen is an expert witness who testifies to federal agencies including the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regarding nuclear design defects, safety flaws, and decommissioning. His testimony provided valuable insight into the Three Mile Island atomic meltdown, Vermont Yankee (VY) underground pipe failures, and steam generator flaws at San Onofre in California. Concerned about the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi, Mr. Gundersen has presented to Japanese universities, the National Press Club, and to members of the Diet. He, his wife Maggie, and Reiko Okazaki authored the Japanese bestselling book,Fukushima Daiichi: The Truth and The Way Forward published by Shueisha Publishing (2012).

The Fairewinds Crew created this special 2-minute animation to show you why building new nukes is a lost opportunity for humankind with precious time and money wasted on the wrong choice. Check outCO2 Smokescreenhere.

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

The clock is ticking for public input!

Waste Control Specialists (WCS), in Andrews County, Texas, is seeking to expand its existing hazardous waste site to include high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants across the country. If approved, 40,000 tons of irradiated fuel rods from nuclear reactors around the country could be transported through major cities and farmlands to be stored for 40 years or longer on a concrete pad, creating a de facto permanent disposal facility at a site that has not been designed or evaluated for permanent isolation.

We need your comments in opposition to the Waste Control Specialists (WCS) Consolidated "Interim" Storage waste dump site in West Texas now!

The NRC must conduct safety and environmental reviews before it decides whether to approve the dump application. Hundreds of Texas and New Mexico residents turned out last week to tell the NRC they don’t want a radioactive dump and nuclear waste shipments in their communities—now we all need to make our voices heard.

Public comments wll be accepted through March 13th. Now is the time to make our voices heard loud and clear: No Consolidated "Interim" Storage Waste Dumps!

The nuclear industry has been selling the world a story that nuclear power is a solution to climate change because it does not generate carbon dioxide (CO2), a major greenhouse gas. While this is true of the nuclear chain reaction itself, the front and back ends of nuclear power generate a large volume of CO2 and leave a trail of endlessly dangerous radioactivity along the way.

☢ Nuclear power has a big carbon footprint. At the front end of nuclear power, carbon energy is used for uranium mining, milling, processing, conversion, and enrichment, as well as for transportation, formulation of rods and construction of nuclear reactors (power plants). At the back end, there is the task of isolation of highly radioactive nuclear waste for millennia—a task which science has so far not been able to address. Large amounts of water are also used, first in mining and then in cooling the reactors.

All along the nuclear fuel chain, radioactive contamination of air, land and water occurs. Uranium mine and mill cleanup demands large amounts of fossil fuel. Each year 2,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste and twelve million cubic-feet of low-level radioactive waste are generated in the U.S. alone. None of this will magically disappear. Vast amounts of energy will be needed to isolate these dangerous wastes for generations to come.

☢ Nuclear power takes too long to deploy. Construction of the 1500 new reactors that the nuclear industry claims are needed to address global warming would mean opening a new reactor once every 2 weeks for the next 60 years. Reactors can take 10-15 years to build with an estimated cost of $12-15 billion each. In the past, cost and time needed for construction have each more than doubled from original estimates. We need to supply low-carbon energy sources NOW.

☢ Nuclear power is not suited for warming climates. Nuclear reactors need enormous
amounts of cool water to continually remove heat from their cores. Reactors have been forced to close during heat waves due to warmth of sea, lake or river water — just when electricity is being used most. Low water levels during heat and drought have also forced reactors to shut down. In addition, cooling causes serious damage to aquatic life, killing millions of fish and untold numbers of macroinvertebrates, aquatic eggs and larvae.

Six times as much carbon can be saved with efficiency or wind. Benjamin Sovacool from the Institute for Energy and Environment at Vermont Law School averaged the high and low estimates of carbon pollution from nuclear power. His study revealed that nuclear power’s carbon emissions are well below scrubbed coal-fired plants, natural gas-fired plants and oil. However, nuclear emits twice as much carbon as solar photovoltaic and six times as much as onshore wind farms. Energy efficiency and some of the other renewables also beat nuclear by sixfold or more.

☢ Nuclear power is not flexible. Nuclear is all-or-nothing power. A reactor can’t be geared to produce less power when electricity from renewables (like wind and solar) increases on the grid. This can make it challenging to increase renewables past a certain point.

When a reactor shuts down due to accident, planned upgrade or permanent closure, a large amount of power has to be found elsewhere. And nuclear plants are being closed, not opened — some because they no longer are making a profit. It’s important to develop renewables NOW to be able to replace the electricity when utilities announce plans to close reactors.

☢ Nuclear subsidies rob research on renewables. Nuclear power has been subsidized throughout most of its fuel chain. In 2011 the Union of Concerned Scientists published Nuclear Power, Still Not Viable without Subsidies. This report shows that in some cases subsidies were greater than the value of the electricity produced. Subsidies are supposed to be for new innovations — not for propping up outdated technologies like fossil fuels and nuclear. Nuclear is also a dirty extractive industry – and like coal, oil and gas, nuclear depends on a limited supply of natural resources (uranium) in the ground.

☢ Cost of nuclear is going up, while cost of renewables is going down. Estimates for new reactors are, on average, four times higher than estimates from just eight years ago. Estimates for new reactors are invariably far less than the final cost, with the final cost often doubling. Sometimes, as in the cases of the Columbia Generating Station, Cherokee, and Perry, billions were spent while the reactors were never finished. Costs of renewables continue going down while their efficiency increases.

RENEWABLES ARE THE REAL ANSWER!

Mitigating climate disruption demands sound investment in economical, expedient, clean and, most of all, safe technologies. Wind and solar are getting cheaper and more efficient by leaps and bounds. Advances are being made in energy storage. Geothermal energy is being tapped extensively.

Wind farms added about 13 gigawatts of new power in the U.S. in 2012. Solar photovoltaic (PV) plants added 4.2 gigawatts of electricity in 2013. And that's just solar PV. Solar water heaters have become very economic and popular. There are also concentrated solar power arrays that generate electricity directly from the sun's heat, so the total amount of solar power is actually higher than the PV number alone.

Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute and Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research have written articles and books on how both carbon and nuclear can be replaced nationwide with renewables by 2050. Dr. Makhijani’s book Carbon Free and Nuclear Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy can be downloaded from the internet. The phasing out of nuclear power and coal is now well underway, and the switch to wind, solar and efficiency is gaining momentum.

Check out the Nuclear Free Campaign of the Sierra Club Facebook Group and follow @NuclearFreeSC on Twitter.

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Mar142017

Washington—Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) joined with 12 Senate colleagues demanding the Defense and Energy departments reject a recent Pentagon report that called for new “limited-use” nuclear weapons and suggested ending the nuclear testing ban.

“There is no such thing as a limited nuclear war, and the United States should be seeking to raise the threshold for nuclear use, not blur that threshold by building additional so-called low-yield weapons,” wrote the senators.

I REFER to the report “Expert: There is rising resistance to nuke option” (The Star, March 15) where Prof Ramesh Thakur warned of “rising public opposition towards nuclear energy due to its many risks.” He emphasised that the Malaysian Government “must weigh all the potential risks, including the possibility of a nuclear accident, smuggling and theft of nuclear components.”

It was noted that the final report of the Integrated Nuclear Infrastructure Review (INIR) Mission Phase 1 would soon be tabled for discussion by Cabinet, and claimed that Malaysia is thoroughly prepared to make an informed decision about introducing nuclear power.

But there are many convincing reasons why nuclear energy is not a viable option for Malaysia. The global nuclear industry has continually failed to contain escalating costs and delays in the construction of nuclear power plants. There will always be the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear terrorism.

Nuclear power plants are prone to accidents but fortunately major accidents are not common. However, when they do occur, they can be catastrophic, as we have experienced in Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima…

…Cheap nuclear power is a myth. Forbesmagazine has called it “the biggest managerial disaster in history.” As recently as May 2009, two financial reports in the business section of theNew York Times highlighted the incredible economics of building a nuclear power plant. The reports revealed two fiascos involving the construction of a new reactor in Olkiluoto in Finland by the French company, Areva, and the virtual collapse of the once touted global flagship, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. Both companies were overtaken by cost overruns amounting to billions of dollars caused by decades-long delays in completing construction schedules.

The nuclear industry’s history of financial disasters is lamentable. It includes the loss of more than US$1tril in subsidies, abandoned projects and other public misadventures. Amory Lovins, an energy expert, has called it “the greatest failure of any enterprise in the industrial history of the world.”

The most critical feature of nuclear power is its production of deadly nuclear waste which remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years and for which there is no safe, permanent method of disposal. ..

Friday, March 17, 2017

SAN FRANCISCO — An attorney for the Marshall Islands told a skeptical Ninth Circuit panel this week that the federal government must comply with its international treaty obligations to eliminate nuclear weapons around the world.

Though the appellate panel did not indicate at the Wednesday hearing how it would rule, it pummeled counsel for the Marshall Islands while lobbing softball questions to a Department of Justice attorney.

The Republic of the Marshall Islands sued the United States and eight other nuclear-armed nations in April 2014, accusing them of violating the 1968 Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons by failing to dismantle their nuclear arsenals.

The treaty prevents non-nuclear nations from acquiring nuclear weapons, and requires nations with nuclear arms to negotiate their elimination...

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Their basic rights to health, housing, and environment are being violated. The government is desperately trying to minimize the disaster at the expense of survivors in an attempt to revive the dying nuclear industry and suffocate other cleaner energy sources. We must say no!

Disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima remind the world how dangerous nuclear power is. But right now, the nuclear industry is trying to downplay the risks of a nuclear disaster. In Fukushima radiation exposure is still a very real threat despite failed “decontamination”.The Japanese government is set to lift evacuation orders in heavily contaminated areas around Fukushima. It will cut compensation and housing support to survivors, who are still struggling six years later.

Ms. Fukushima, who evacuated from Fukushima to Kyoto Prefecture with her two young children, is the co-coordinator of a plaintiffs’ group in a lawsuit demanding fair compensation.

The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe may feel like ancient history in world constantly bombarded with news of the another tragedy or disaster. But for those who were impacted by the worst nuclear disaster in a generation, the crisis is far from over. And it is women and children that have borne the brunt of human rights violations resulting from it, both in the immediate aftermath and as a result of the Japan government’s nuclear resettlement policy.

Japan has ratified multiple international treaties that recognise the right to health as a fundamental human right. It is defined as the “enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health,” and includes the right to information and participation as integral tenets of upholding this right. Individuals must be able to make informed choices about their health and influence policy decisions that affect them.

But in the wake of the accident, unaddressed issues with Japan’s nuclear policy and emergency planning, which the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights had warned the government about in 2001, led to the direct violation of women's and children’s rights.

And while the injustices faced by women and children in the immediate aftermath of the disaster were the result of policy failure and legislative inaction for a decade prior, the violations of their human rights resulting from the resettlement policy that has been rolled under current Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are calculated and deliberate.

• SimplyInfo’s Fukushima 6th Anniversary Report explored and its sometimes shocking revelations explained by Nancy Foust, Communications manager & research team member SimplyInfo.org. Verifiable, footnoted, solid info you can trust: http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=16171
• Nuclear Hotseat’s European correspondent Shaun McGee on Europe’s mystery radation spikes. Shaun’s done the multi-national research about the sources of this fresh radioactivity… and what may be behind the data about it suddenly disappearing from official the European radiation monitoring site.

We call on you to take action to ensure that no president can unilaterally launch a nuclear war.

U.S. nuclear launch procedures have been designed for speed, not for democratic decisions. The president (or his designee) is the only person who can order the use of nuclear weapons and there are no checks or balances on that authority. As President Richard Nixon observed in 1974, "I can go back into my office and pick up the telephone and in 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead."

While it should be inconceivable that any American president would conduct a nuclear first strike, President Trump’s past statements and erratic behavior make it imperative that we put checks and balances on nuclear launch authority. Only Congress can declare war, and that authority should apply to a nuclear first strike as well. Please co-sponsor H.R. 669/S. 200 to make America and the world safer by prohibiting the president from unilaterally starting a nuclear war.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Today, we commemorate Saturdays' 6th anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the worlds worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. The disaster was triggered by an 9.0 earthquake followed by a tsunami. Contamination from the accident spread across the Pacific Ocean. Now the Japanese government is sit to lift evacuation orders for the area surrounding Fukushima. Our guests are Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste watchdog at Beyond Nuclear, and Arnie Gunderson, nuclear power expert with Fairewinds

The great news is that Labor has won the election in a landslide and have a really strong mandate to legislate changes in Western Australia. We hope that they will legislate a ban on uranium mining in the coming months.

But we will have to keep on the to make sure this happens..

This years Walkatjurra Dates are now set for the 4th of August leaving Fremantle and returning on the 3rd of September. We are hoping for a really good turn out this year ad hopefully it will be a celebration of a Ban on uranium mining. If Labor have not done it by then we need lots of people to come and demand that they keep their promises..

WALKATJURRA WALKABOUT is a celebration of Wangkatja country, a testament to the strength of the community who have fought to stop uranium mining at Yeelirrie for over forty years, and a chance to come together to continue share our commitment to a sustainable future without nuclear. It is a chance to reconnect with the land, and to revive the tradition of walking for country.

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

“On March 11, we will be remembering that exactly six years have passed since the triple explosions and meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor site. Over 150,000 from Fukushima Prefecture were forced to leave their homes to flee from radiation, the majority of which are still living in many different parts of Japan. It is likely that many of them will neverbe able to return to their homes. We also know that 300 tonnes of radioactive water flows EVERY DAY through the site of the Fukushima disaster into the Pacific Ocean. So the crisis there is as acute as ever, and we support calls for an international response to this environmental, economic and social disaster..."

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FUKUSHIMA RESPONSE
Media Contact: Linda Speel
707-765-0196
Remember 3.11.11 – the 6th Anniversary of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
A Day of Remembrance in Solidarity & Sympathy for Japan
(Petaluma 2/22/17) Sonoma County residents are invited to a FREE public event on Saturday, March 11,
2017, to commemorate the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster that occurred a few days after the
great earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011. “Remember 3.11.11” is a
reflective and informed event sponsored by three socially engaged local groups: FukushimaResponse, Peace
Crane Project, and Metta Center for Nonviolence.
The members of these groups will gather in Putnam Plaza, 129 Petaluma Blvd. N. in Petaluma,
California, at 10:00am and will remain available until 2:00pm to answer questions about the history, current status
and future implications of this ongoing nuclear disaster. There will be geiger counter demonstrations, origami
making, guided meditation, and music. At the top of each hour, three minutes and eleven seconds of silence will
be observed for all the victims, past and future, of this monumental ecological tragedy.
Numerous other efforts to remember the Sixth anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in
Japan are being organized globally; for example, in London, Berlin, Spain, Colombia, Australia. With all the
troubling news and cause for great concern in our world right now, there persists an international network of
people who know and care deeply about what this particular nuclear catastrophe means. This Petaluma event is
part of an international response.
John Bertucci of FukushimaResponse described his thoughts for this day, “Given that there are 450 other
operating Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) sprinkled across the globe that could easily become similar catastrophes,
it is important that we recognize and understand the risks and potential impacts of the radioactive contamination
they would release into our communities and ecosystems. You could say Japan is teaching us how to respond;
unfortunately, especially for the people of Japan, it’s been more a lesson in how not to.”
FukushimaResponse has organized or participated in memorial events for all five preceding Fukushima
anniversaries, and in October of 2013 assembled 500 people for the “Fukushima is Here” human mural on Ocean
Beach in San Francisco. Last year, Peace Crane Project organized a “Nuclear Remembrance Day” in Putnam
Plaza on the August 6th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. Metta Center for Nonviolence is an
internationally known organization based in Petaluma, dedicated to helping people find their way to live in peace
and harmony.
The public is enthusiastically invited to join in this important annual event to commemorate the Sixth
Year Anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) disaster. An exceptional opportunity to
manifest our continued concern and compassion for those who lived nearby and have lost their homes, their
livelihood, their health – as well as to think about all of us on the planet that the Daiichi disaster continues to
contaminate.
“Remember 3.11.11 – the 6th Anniversary of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster” begins at 10:00am on
Saturday, March 11, 2017 in Putnam Plaza, 129 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma, California. This FREE event is
sponsored by: FukushimaResponse, FukushimaResponse.org — Peace Crane Project, https://
peacecraneproject.org/ — Metta Center for Nonviolence, http://mettacenter.org/ — Peaceroots Alliance, http://
peaceroots.org — Shakuhachi flute music provided by Elliot Kallen.
For more information & interviews contact: Linda Speel 707-765-0196
Link to recent article by Robert Hunziker on the current situation in Fukushima:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/20/fukushima-a-lurking-global-catastrophe/

Friday, March 3, 2017

– On Monday, March 6, at 8:15AM-9:15AM, ON BEHALF OF PLANET EARTH will be vigiling, leafletting and holding signs at the Japanese Consulate/Boston, 200 Atlantic Avenue at South Station in front of the Federal Reserve Bank Bldg. [This is Dewey Square, where occupyboston was]. We will be wearing our pink slips to fire Entergy and a haz mat suit and athlete sportswear. From there we will walk together to the MA State House and do same and then walk through State House and visit some of our lawmakers. From there, either on Mon or Tues we will do same at John F Kennedy Federal Bldg.

Our witness is to remember the 6th anniversary of Fukushima, March 11, 2017, still pouring its radioactive water into all our oceans, our one ocean, these six years.
We wlll also tell them all, yet again, that Fukushima=Pilgrim, are same GE model Mark 1, boiling water reactor BWR

MOVE FUKUSHIMA/TOKYO/JAPAN/TEPCO 2020 OLYMPICS AWAY FROM FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR RADIATION AND OUT OF JAPAN.

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Einstein said,
"The splitting
of the atom
changed everything
save man's mode
of thinking;
thus we drift towards
unparalleled catastrophe."
He also said,
"Nuclear power is a hell of a way
to boil water!"

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My hope here is to recover a portion of my expenses for the purchase of a new laptop, pay for some of the monthly expenses for #OccupyNuclear, and just to have something to live on for a little while. Please see the gofundme page for a little information on my situation.

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